For a long time now, I’ve thought that you’re never really a grownup until you realize that there are no grownups. We all have a fantasy, inherited from childhood, that somewhere, someone, is truly in charge and knows what they’re doing and has got things under control. I remember the moment when I realized that’s not true. There is no such person. It’s on you, me, us, to try to be a little wiser than we are, which involves, as a first step, giving up the fantasy that anyone in the actual world knows entirely what they’re doing. I was thinking about this last night as I watched Andrew Cuomo repeatedly try and fail to belittle Mamdani as a kid, […]
Reading this New York Times report on Eric Adams’ dropping out of the race—where Adams is described, with no sense of irony, as “politically moderate” and is quoted as warning against Mamdani’s desire to “destroy the very system we built together over generations” while Cuomo is quoted as saying, “We are facing an existential threat in an extreme radicalism that threatens the existence of this city as we know it”—it dawns on me that we on the left are being presented with a golden opportunity. An opportunity that reminds me, seriously, of something only Lincoln was able to pull off. Zohran Mamdani is running now against Andrew Cuomo, a corrupt sexual harasser, who has been aided from the start by […]
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Economies, Law, The Left, The Right
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Tags Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Cuomo, Donald Trump, Eric Adams, Greg Grandin, James Oakes, Matt Karp, Zohran Mamdani
News from the world that Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, are making for us.
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Economies, Education, Jews, Labor/Workplace, Palestine and Israel, Repression, The Left, The Right
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Tags Andrew Cuomo, Brooklyn College, Eric Adams, John Deere, Lisa Cook, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Northwestern, Zohran Mamdani
I wasn’t going to address the controversy over what Zohran Mamdani did or didn’t say about the phrase “globalize the intifada.” But now that Hakeem Jeffries, the Minority Leader of the Democrats in the House, has decided to weigh in on it, on the Sunday morning talk shows no less—specifically, by invoking the fear that Jewish New Yorkers like me are supposed to be feeling when we hear the phrase being used—I think it’s worth a comment or two. Jeffries claims that Mamdani needs to “clarify his position” on the phrase, which is silly, because the only reason Jeffries is even talking about Mamdani’s position is that he has clarified it. On June 17, Tim Miller, an interviewer for The […]
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Jews, Middle East, Palestine and Israel, The Left, The Right, The State
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Tags Andrew Cuomo, Brooklyn College, Edith Wharton, Hakeem Jeffries, Kirsten Gillebrand, Margaret Litvin, Peter Beinart, Zohran Mamdani
I want to talk about Zohran Mamdani’s being Muslim and South Asian/Ugandan, but before I do, I want to say that I support him simply because’s a democratic socialist with a once-in-a-generation political talent. Ghouls like Andrew Cuomo and his supporters seem to think political talent is making social media clips rather than the oratorical and forensic skills Mamdani has and that we traditionally associate with democratic leadership. I’ve been delighted to see Mamdani explain his positions and platform in language that is clear and complex. I’ve been delighted to see what a happy warrior he is, in the style of FDR, taking genuine pleasure in the give and take of adult argument and debate, speaking like a grownup, giving […]
Politics, they say, is about making hard choices. And none seems harder right now than whom to vote for in the New York City mayoral race. According to the New York Times, the top two fundraisers in the race are Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo. It’s true that Mamdani is overwhelmingly getting his money from small donors, which is good, while Cuomo is getting his money from the big wigs. Including Jessica Seinfeld, who, last I heard, was giving thousands of dollars to a pro-Israel group that beat the crap out of pro-Palestine protesters at UCLA. But, as the Times notes, there are other issues of concern about both candidates. On the one hand, there’s this: Andrew Cuomo, who resigned […]
The New York State Legislature is readying to pass a bill that would make it illegal for any college or university in the state to use public monies to fund faculty membership in—or travel to—academic organizations that boycott the institutions of another country. The clear target of this legislation, as the Speaker of the State Assembly has made clear, is the American Studies Association. The bill has already passed the NYS Senate; it is going to be voted on some time this week in the Assembly. As the Center for Constitutional Rights and the New York chapter of the National Lawyers Guild state in this letter, the bill raises a host of constitutional red flags. Boycotts are time-honored expressive activities, […]